Daily Reflections on the Eucharist Day - 104

If we read the Gospel, let us refer it to the Eucharist, and from the Eucharist apply it to ourselves. We then have a much greater power.

The Gospel enlightens, and in the Eucharist, we really have under our eyes the continuation of what we have read in it. Our Lord, who is the Model, is also the light that shows us that Model and discovers to us its beauty. Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament is His own light. His own knowledge, as the sun is its own proof of existence. It rises and makes itself known. This requires no reasoning. A child does not reason in order to recognize its parents. And so does Our Lord manifest Himself by His Presence, His reality. But in the measure that we know His voice better, that our heart is more empty and more sympathetic, does Our Lord manifest Himself under a more luminous light and in a more intimate manner. They alone know this who love. He then gives to the soul a divine conviction which eclipses all light of natural reason. Look at Magdalen! A single word from Jesus and she has recognized Him! Thus in the Blessed Sacrament, He says but one word, but how it resounds in our heart, "It is I." And we feel Him, we believe Him more firmly than if we saw Him with our bodily eyes. This Eucharistic manifestation ought to be the starting point of all the acts of our life. All virtues should take their rise in the Eucharist. Do we wish to practice humility? Let us look at how Jesus practices it in the Blessed Sacrament. Let us turn away from this light, this knowledge, and go to the Crib, if we wish, or to Calvary. We shall find that we can go thither easily, because it is according to the nature of our intelligence to proceed from the known to the unknown. In the Sacrament, we have Our Lord’s humility under our eyes. It will be much easier for us after that to suppose what it was in His birth, or under any other circumstances. Let us do this in regard to all the virtues. We shall then understand the Gospel more clearly. Our Lord speaks by His state. Better than anyone else can He explain and make us understand His words and His mysteries. He gives us more unction to make us relish them at the same time that we comprehend them. We no longer look for the mine since we are in it, exploring it. It is only by the Eucharist that we feel the full force of these words of the Saviour, "I am the way!" Let our spiritual study be, then, to contemplate the Eucharist, to seek in It the example of what we have to do in all circumstances of the Christian life. It is in this method that consists, and by it is nourished, it we become Eucharistic in our own life. By it we are sanctified according to the grace of the Eucharist.